Last year I came across a recipe by Meathead for refrigerator pickles and have been a fan ever since. There is no fermentation or pasteurization process involved, however they must remain refrigerated for storage.
Refrigerator pickles are easy to make and are extremely delicious.
The ingredients are simple: pickling cukes, dill, garlic, kosher salt, spices, vinegar and water. The technique is simple: make the brine, put the cukes and spices in a jar, pour the hot brine over the pickles, cover and age in the refrigerator.
The original recipe calls for dill seeds and black peppercorns. I used fresh dill and in addition to black peppercorns I added mustard seeds, cardamon pods, whole allspice and dried red chiles.
I sanitized a few jars and lids by submerging them in boiling water. Then I made the brine. I brought water, vinegar and kosher salt to a boil cooking until all of the salt was dissolved.
Water.
Vinegar.
Kosher salt.
These days I only cook brown rice. Brown rice is a kind of whole natural grain with a nutty flavor. Sometimes when I have leftover rice I don’t freeze to use another time I make fried rice.
I keep it simple by using what I have on hand in my fridge, freezer and pantry. In this instance I used onions, carrots, ginger, eggs, peas, canola oil, soy sauce and sesame oil to make fried rice.
Cooked short grain brown rice.
1 onion diced.
1 carrot cut into batons and then diced.
I tried to cut the carrot and onion uniform in size so they would cook evenly together. Neat cuts also look appealing in the finished dish.
1 thumb size piece of ginger peeled and diced fine.
I’ve recently been experimenting with a recipe for caramel corn from Tasting Table. My first few attempts at making the recipe as is yielded burnt caramel corn. After getting the technique right, I tried altering the recipe by adding chocolate but that was unsuccessful. I tried adding graham cracker without success as well. Adding bacon, on the other hand, made for a fantastic addition to the caramel corn.
Oil, popcorn kernels, butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, salt, baking soda, vanilla bean, dry roasted peanuts and bacon.
I split the vanilla bean in half, scraped out the seeds and set them aside with the salt and baking soda. I put a couple of tablespoons of oil in a large pot over medium high heat and tossed in the popcorn.
Oven mitts kept my hands safe while keeping the lid slightly ajar when cooking the popcorn. Shaking the pot while cooking the popcorn helped keep the kernels from burning.
I set the popcorn aside in a large bowl.
I cut about a 1/2 lb. of frozen bacon crosswise and set it over medium heat in the same pot I made the popcorn. Frozen bacon is easy to cut into uniform pieces.
As the bacon cooked, the frozen pieces easily separated and began to crisp nicely.
betterthancookingmama asked: Hi! I just wanted to personally thank you for following my blog. I hope it entertains you, and I hope it lives up to your expectation. Sorry for the late greetings, I've been busy with school.
I can't wait to get new ideas from you!
- Justina
Thanks Justina, and thank you for following my blog too. I’m looking forward to being inspired by your food.
All the best,
Adrian
I’m always impressed with the garlicky flavor of sautéed spinach from Italian restaurants, they just seem to get it right. I haven’t had much success mimicking this flavor at home until recently. I’m not sure why I never thought of it but I figured I’d try to add levels of garlic flavor throughout, as opposed to just using lots and lots of garlic like I used to.
I worked with 5 ingredients: spinach, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. My idea was to confit garlic in olive oil, use the garlic oil to sauté the spinach, and add minced garlic.
I peeled a head of garlic making sure to remove all of the papery skins.
I placed all but two cloves of garlic into a small cast iron skillet, covered the garlic with olive oil and set the heat on low.
I minced the remaining garlic and set it aside.
I cooked the garlic until the cloves turned golden brown and soft. I removed the garlic confit and reserved the garlic oil.
I set my wok on high heat and poured in some of the reserved garlic oil.
As soon as the the oil began to shimmer I placed the spinach in the wok turning frequently with my tongs.
Once the spinach began to wilt and reduce in volume I incorporated the minced garlic cooking until fragrant.
Lastly, I tossed in the garlic confit and seasoned with salt and pepper. Three different garlic flavor levels did the trick.
